GROWING OLD UNGRACEFULLY: Worst. Year. Ever.

“For
the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon,
during the whole year [536 AD].”

— Byzantine
historian Prokopius

###

Most
of us, I suspect, could easily pick out our personal Worst Year:
divorce, death of a parent or sibling or child, overdose, car
accident. Then there are the global events that shaped our lives,
which happened during our lifetimes. For me, that would be 1945, when
this country dropped atomic bombs on two Japanese cities. A friend,
still reeling from recent elections, picks his worst year as 2016. An
article I just read insisted on 1979, citing its “legacy of global
misery and instability…High inflation, U.S. encouragement of jihad
against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the turn to fossil fuels
after Three Mile Island, jingoist sentiments inflamed by the Iranian
hostage crisis — all still cast a shadow on our future.” How about
1968? RFK and MLK assassinations, Prague Spring/Russian occupation,
Chicago DNC convention (Daley vs. protestors), My Lai massacre,
election of Tricky Dick…

Within
recorded history, many years can be singled out for their particular
mode of devastation. In 1918, the H1N1 influenza epidemic that broke
out in Texas (or France, accounts vary) killed more people than had
fallen in the bloody battles of the First World War. By the time it
had run its course — December 1920 — global population had been reduced
by 50 to 100 million (3-5%).

That
makes 1918 a less severe version of 1348, a favorite pick by
historians for Worst Ever. (Read the late Barbara Tuchman’s
compelling saga A Distant Mirror for a taste of how bad things
were.) That’s when the Black Death took hold; one half of the
population of Europe died in the space of 18 months, and it took 200
years for world population to recover to its previous level of 450
million.

On a
more parochial level, I’ve seen “worst ever” claims from US
historians for the years 1837 (economic crash), 1860 (Civil War), and
1877 (overthrow of Radical Reconstruction). From the point of view of
the original inhabitants of the Americas, 1492 would be a safe bet,
but 1520 was no picnic: some 60 to 90% of the estimated 80 million of
natives living here prior to the European invasion died from a
smallpox epidemic, to which they had no resistance.

Which
brings me to 536 AD. A flurry of newspaper and magazine articles last
November reported that a team headed by Harvard
historian-archeologist Michael McCormick had “officially”
designated that year as the worst ever: “Researchers Identify 536
A.D. as The Absolute Worst Year Ever.” (If you can’t trust Popular
Mechanics for reporting historical truth, who can you trust?)
That was the year the sulfuric aerosol “veil” from a massive
volcanic eruption — probably in Iceland — caused “nuclear winter,”
a global cooling event that changed history. Several manuscripts,
tree ring studies and ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland, and,
most accurately, the Swiss Alps, all zero in on this particular year.

Global temperatures dropped 0.9° F on average for 2-3 years as a result of the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines. (USGS, public domain)

(You
might have gotten a foretaste of this if you read British journalist
David Keys splashy 2000 bestseller Catastrophe, or saw TV
documentaries based on his research. Keys blames a putative eruption
of Krakatoa, Java in 535 for, um, pretty much everything that came
after: fall of the Roman Empire, rise of Islam, demise of the
Teotihuacan civilization, unification of China, origin of the
Japanese nation-state and even King Arthur!)

The
well-attested Icelandic (or North American) volcanic event of 536,
together with two more in 540 and 547, really were global
game-changers. These eruptions initiated the coldest decade ever (at
least in written history): crops failed worldwide, economies
collapsed, populations migrated, and—perhaps due to a curious
temperature-dependent quirk in the anatomy of rats—a massive
flea-borne plague followed (“The Plague of Justinian,” 541-542),
which wiped out perhaps a third of the population of Europe. In
Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, historians
estimate that at least 5,000 people died every day of the
plague.